They and I Part 3

"I had an hour to wait for the train. I talked the matter over with the station-master.

"'Yes,' he said, 'there'll be trouble up there one of these days.'

"I said, 'It seems to me to have begun.'

"He said, 'It's the Indian sun. It gets into their heads. We have one or two in the neighbourhood. They are quiet enough till something happens.'

"'If I'd been two seconds longer,' I said, 'I believe he'd have done it.'

"'It's a taking house,' said the station-master; 'not too big and not too little. It's the sort of house people seem to be looking for.'

"'I don't envy,' I said, 'the next person that finds it.'

"'He settled himself down here,' said the station-master, 'about ten years ago. Since then, if one person has offered to take the house off his hands, I suppose a thousand have. At first he would laugh at them good-temperedly-explain to them that his idea was to live there himself, in peace and quietness, till he died. Two out of every three of them would express their willingness to wait for that, and suggest some arrangement by which they might enter into possession, say, a week after the funeral. The last few months it has been worse than ever. I reckon you're about the eighth that has been up there this week, and to-day only Thursday. There's something to be said, you know, for the old man.'"

"And did he," asked d.i.c.k-"did he shoot the next party that came along?"

"Don't be so silly, d.i.c.k," said Robin; "it's a story. Tell us another, Pa."

"I don't know what you mean, Robina, by a story," I said. "If you mean to imply-"

Robina said she didn't; but I know quite well she did. Because I am an author, and have to tell stories for my living, people think I don't know any truth. It is vexing enough to be doubted when one is exaggerating; to have sneers flung at one by one's own kith and kin when one is struggling to confine oneself to bald, bare narrative-well, where is the inducement to be truthful? There are times when I almost say to myself that I will never tell the truth again.

"As it happens," I said, "the story is true, in many places. I pa.s.s over your indifference to the risk I ran; though a nice girl at the point where the gun was mentioned would have expressed alarm. Anyhow, at the end you might have said something more sympathetic than merely, 'Tell us another.' He did not shoot the next party that arrived, for the reason that the very next day his wife, alarmed at what had happened, went up to London and consulted an expert-none too soon, as it turned out. The poor old fellow died six months later in a private lunatic asylum; I had it from the station-master on pa.s.sing through the junction again this spring. The house fell into the possession of his nephew, who is living in it now. He is a youngish man with a large family, and people have learnt that the place is not for sale. It seems to me rather a sad story. The Indian sun, as the station-master thinks, may have started the trouble; but the end was undoubtedly hastened by the annoyance to which the unfortunate gentleman had been subjected; and I myself might have been shot. The only thing that comforts me is thinking of that fool's black eye-the fool that sent me there."

"And none of the other houses," suggested d.i.c.k, "were any good at all?"

"There were drawbacks, d.i.c.k," I explained. "There was a house in Ess.e.x; it was one of the first your mother and I inspected. I nearly shed tears of joy when I read the advertis.e.m.e.nt. It had once been a priory. Queen Elizabeth had slept there on her way to Greenwich. A photograph of the house accompanied the advertis.e.m.e.nt. I should not have believed the thing had it been a picture. It was under twelve miles from Charing Cross. The owner, it was stated, was open to offers."

"All humbug, I suppose," suggested d.i.c.k.

"The advertis.e.m.e.nt, if anything," I replied, "had under-estimated the attractiveness of that house. All I blame the advertis.e.m.e.nt for is that it did not mention other things. It did not mention, for instance, that since Queen Elizabeth's time the neighbourhood had changed. It did not mention that the entrance was between a public-house one side of the gate and a fried-fish shop on the other; that the Great Eastern Railway-Company had established a goods depot at the bottom of the garden; that the drawing-room windows looked out on extensive chemical works, and the dining-room windows, which were round the corner, on a stonemason's yard. The house itself was a dream."

"But what is the sense of it?" demanded d.i.c.k. "What do house agents think is the good of it? Do they think people likely to take a house after reading the advertis.e.m.e.nt without ever going to see it?"

"I asked an agent once that very question," I replied. "He said they did it first and foremost to keep up the spirits of the owner-the man who wanted to sell the house. He said that when a man was trying to part with a house he had to listen to so much abuse of it from people who came to see it that if somebody did not stick up for the house-say all that could be said for it, and gloss over its defects-he would end by becoming so ashamed of it he would want to give it away, or blow it up with dynamite. He said that reading the advertis.e.m.e.nt in the agent's catalogue was the only thing that reconciled him to being the owner of the house. He said one client of his had been trying to sell his house for years-until one day in the office he read by chance the agent's description of it. Upon which he went straight home, took down the board, and has lived there contentedly ever since. From that point of view there is reason in the system; but for the house-hunter it works badly.

"One agent sent me a day's journey to see a house standing in the middle of a brickfield, with a view of the Grand Junction Ca.n.a.l. I asked him where was the river he had mentioned. He explained it was the other side of the ca.n.a.l, but on a lower level; that was the only reason why from the house you couldn't see it. I asked him for his picturesque scenery. He explained it was farther on, round the bend. He seemed to think me unreasonable, expecting to find everything I wanted just outside the front-door. He suggested my shutting out the brickfield-if I didn't like the brickfield-with trees. He suggested the eucalyptus-tree. He said it was a rapid grower. He also told me that it yielded gum.

"Another house I travelled down into Dorsetshire to see. It contained, according to the advertis.e.m.e.nt, 'perhaps the most perfect specimen of Norman arch extant in Southern England.' It was to be found mentioned in Dugdale, and dated from the thirteenth century. I don't quite know what I expected. I argued to myself that there must have been ruffians of only moderate means even in those days. Here and there some robber baron who had struck a poor line of country would have had to be content with a homely little castle. A few such, hidden away in unfrequented districts, had escaped destruction. More civilised descendants had adapted them to later requirements. I had in my mind, before the train reached Dorchester, something between a miniature Tower of London and a mediaeval edition of Ann Hathaway's cottage at Stratford. I pictured dungeons and a drawbridge, perhaps a secret pa.s.sage. Lamchick has a secret pa.s.sage, leading from behind a sort of portrait in the dining-room to the back of the kitchen chimney. They use it for a linen closet. It seems to me a pity. Of course originally it went on farther. The vicar, who is a bit of an antiquarian, believes it comes out somewhere in the churchyard. I tell Lamchick he ought to have it opened up, but his wife doesn't want it touched. She seems to think it just right as it is. I have always had a fancy for a secret pa.s.sage. I decided I would have the drawbridge repaired and made practicable. Flanked on each side with flowers in tubs, it would have been a novel and picturesque approach."

"Was there a drawbridge?" asked d.i.c.k.

"There was no drawbridge," I explained. "The entrance to the house was through what the caretaker called the conservatory. It was not the sort of house that goes with a drawbridge."

"Then what about the Norman arches?" argued d.i.c.k.

"Not arches," I corrected him; "Arch. The Norman arch was downstairs in the kitchen. It was the kitchen, that had been built in the thirteenth century-and had not had much done to it since, apparently. Originally, I should say, it had been the torture chamber; it gave you that idea. I think your mother would have raised objections to the kitchen-anyhow, when she came to think of the cook. It would have been necessary to put it to the woman before engaging her:-

"'You don't mind cooking in a dungeon in the dark, do you?'

"Some cooks would. The rest of the house was what I should describe as present-day mixed style. The last tenant but one had thrown out a bathroom in corrugated iron."

"Then there was a house in Berkshire that I took your mother to see, with a trout stream running through the grounds. I imagined myself going out after lunch, catching trout for dinner; inviting swagger friends down to 'my little place in Berkshire' for a few days' trout-fishing. There is a man I once knew who is now a baronet. He used to be keen on fishing. I thought maybe I'd get him. It would have looked well in the Literary Gossip column: 'Among the other distinguished guests'-you know the sort of thing. I had the paragraph already in my mind. The wonder is I didn't buy a rod."

"Wasn't there any trout stream?" questioned Robin.

"There was a stream," I answered; "if anything, too much stream. The stream was the first thing your mother noticed. She noticed it a quarter of an hour before we came to it-before we knew it was the stream. We drove back to the town, and she bought a smelling-bottle, the larger size.

"It gave your mother a headache, that stream, and made me mad. The agent's office was opposite the station. I allowed myself half an hour on my way back to tell him what I thought of him, and then I missed the train. I could have got it in if he had let me talk all the time, but he would interrupt. He said it was the people at the paper-mill-that he had spoken to them about it more than once; he seemed to think sympathy was all I wanted. He a.s.sured me, on his word as a house-agent, that it had once been a trout stream. The fact was historical. Isaac Walton had fished there-that was prior to the paper-mill. He thought a collection of trout, male and female, might be bought and placed in it; preference being given to some hardy breed of trout, accustomed to roughing it. I told him I wasn't looking for a place where I could play at being Noah; and left him, as I explained to him, with the intention of going straight to my solicitors and inst.i.tuting proceedings against him for talking like a fool; and he put on his hat and went across to his solicitors to commence proceedings against me for libel.

"I suppose that, with myself, he thought better of it in the end. But I'm tired of having my life turned into one perpetual first of April.

This house that I have bought is not my heart's desire, but about it there are possibilities. We will put in lattice windows, and fuss-up the chimneys. Maybe we will let in a tablet over the front-door, with a date-always looks well: it is a picturesque figure, the old-fashioned five. By the time we have done with it-for all practical purposes-it will be a Tudor manor-house. I have always wanted an old Tudor manor-house. There is no reason, so far as I can see, why there should not be stories connected with this house. Why should not we have a room in which Somebody once slept? We won't have Queen Elizabeth. I'm tired of Queen Elizabeth. Besides, I don't believe she'd have been nice. Why not Queen Anne? A quiet, gentle old lady, from all accounts, who would not have given trouble. Or, better still, Shakespeare. He was constantly to and fro between London and Stratford. It would not have been so very much out of his way. 'The room where Shakespeare slept!'

Why, it's a new idea. n.o.body ever seems to have thought of Shakespeare.

There is the four-post bedstead. Your mother never liked it. She will insist, it harbours things. We might hang the wall with scenes from his plays, and have a bust of the old gentleman himself over the door. If I'm left alone and not worried, I'll probably end by believing that he really did sleep there."

"What about cupboards?" suggested d.i.c.k. "The Little Mother will clamour for cupboards."

It is unexplainable, the average woman's pa.s.sion for cupboards. In heaven, her first request, I am sure, is always, "Can I have a cupboard?"

She would keep her husband and children in cupboards if she had her way: that would be her idea of the perfect home, everybody wrapped up with a piece of camphor in his or her own proper cupboard. I knew a woman once who was happy-for a woman. She lived in a house with twenty-nine cupboards: I think it must have been built by a woman. They were s.p.a.cious cupboards, many of them, with doors in no way different from other doors. Visitors would wish each other good-night and disappear with their candles into cupboards, staggering out backwards the next moment, looking scared. One poor gentleman, this woman's husband told me, having to go downstairs again for something he had forgotten, and unable on his return to strike anything else but cupboards, lost heart and finished up the night in a cupboard. At breakfast-time guests would hurry down, and burst open cupboard doors with a cheery "Good-morning."

When that woman was out, n.o.body in that house ever knew where anything was; and when she came home she herself only knew where it ought to have been. Yet once, when one of those twenty-nine cupboards had to be cleared out temporarily for repairs, she never smiled, her husband told me, for more than three weeks-not till the workmen were out of the house, and that cupboard in working order again. She said it was so confusing, having nowhere to put her things.

The average woman does not want a house, in the ordinary sense of the word. What she wants is something made by a genii. You have found, as you think, the ideal house. You show her the Adams fireplace in the drawing-room. You tap the wainscoting of the hall with your umbrella: "Oak," you impress upon her, "all oak." You draw her attention to the view: you tell her the local legend. By fixing her head against the window-pane she can see the tree on which the man was hanged. You dwell upon the sundial; you mention for a second time the Adams fireplace.

"It's all very nice," she answers, "but where are the children going to sleep?"

It is so disheartening.

If it isn't the children, it's the water. She wants water-wants to know where it comes from. You show her where it comes from.

"What, out of that nasty place!" she exclaims.

She is equally dissatisfied whether it be drawn from a well, or whether it be water that has fallen from heaven and been stored in tanks. She has no faith in Nature's water. A woman never believes that water can be good that does not come from a water-works. Her idea appears to be that the Company makes it fresh every morning from some old family recipe.

If you do succeed in reconciling her to the water, then she feels sure that the chimneys smoke; they look as if they smoked. Why-as you tell her-the chimneys are the best part of the house. You take her outside and make her look at them. They are genuine sixteenth-century chimneys, with carving on them. They couldn't smoke. They wouldn't do anything so inartistic. She says she only hopes you are right, and suggests cowls, if they do.

After that she wants to see the kitchen-where's the kitchen? You don't know where it is. You didn't bother about the kitchen. There must be a kitchen, of course. You proceed to search for the kitchen. When you find it she is worried because it is the opposite end of the house to the dining-room. You point out to her the advantage of being away from the smell of the cooking. At that she gets personal: tells you that you are the first to grumble when the dinner is cold; and in her madness accuses the whole male s.e.x of being impractical. The mere sight of an empty house makes a woman fretful.

Of course the stove is wrong. The kitchen stove always is wrong. You promise she shall have a new one. Six months later she will want the old one back again: but it would be cruel to tell her this. The promise of that new stove comforts her. The woman never loses hope that one day it will come-the all-satisfying kitchen stove, the stove of her girlish dreams.

The question of the stove settled, you imagine you have silenced all opposition. At once she begins to talk about things that n.o.body but a woman or a sanitary inspector can talk about without blushing.

It calls for tact, getting a woman into a new house. She is nervous, suspicious.

"I am glad, my dear d.i.c.k," I answered; "that you have mentioned cupboards. It is with cupboards that I am hoping to lure your mother.

The cupboards, from her point of view, will be the one bright spot; there are fourteen of them. I am trusting to cupboards to tide me over many things. I shall want you to come with me, d.i.c.k. Whenever your mother begins a sentence with: 'But now to be practical, dear,' I want you to murmur something about cupboards-not irritatingly as if it had been prearranged: have a little gumption."

"Will there be room for a tennis court?" demanded d.i.c.k.